CALENDAR PERSPIRATION

Edison is famously credited for saying, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Once you have some inspiration try calendaring the perspiration it takes to see your goals through. Schedule your goals as re-occuring events. As you see your calendar fill ALL the way up - every minute of every day accounted for - it may feel overwhelming and or suffocating. But the truth is you already spend every minute of every day. My buddy Jay Kim did a whole talk on being intentional with the 28,500 days each human - on average - lives. Calendaring your minutes is a sure-fire way to ensure you perspire in the areas that matter most to your values.

Put everything - and I mean everything - on there. Schedule time to run, to read, to be with your family, to Facebook, to eat, to sleep, to pray, to watch TV, to invest in creative projects, to meet with clients or staff, to shop, to rest. Put it all on there.

At first passall your desired activities won't fit in a single week. Don't give up! Work the different events until you have something you sense is gonna get you closer to your goals. One of the worst disintegrations of our culture is separating our private life from our professional life and our social life from our spiritual life. Stick 'em all on there together and duke it out. When you re-integrate your various goals into a single calendar you'll start to feel the energy (and momentum) an integrated approach to living can bring.

Once you have your template you can populate it with a week or two of actual commitments. Fill in names and projects with specific things you're working on. If you get an invitation for a meeting or for a lunch appointment go look at how you've mapped out your time and pick a spot that corresponds.

Are you stuck on which events to priortize? One of the ways you can help prioritize one event over the other is to define your "BIG 3."

Because your life is way more complex than 3 goals these BIG 3 won't dictate all your time. But they'll help you give weight to certain items over others. Your BIG 3 will help define how to prioritize your allocated time.

No one takes steps forward without the help of friends, coaches, and mentors. You are not an island. Make sure you have people around you who can help you move forward. As one mentor of mine used to say, "Vision eats culture for lunch." Your context - the people who surround you - play the biggest part in you realizing your goals and values. So who's surrounding you?